Mac and Cheese Fritters

All I can say about Mac and Cheese Fritters is that if they were around when I was in college, I would have been at least 400 pounds.

I don't know how they do it, but they fry up a ball of macaroni and cheese. The outside is crunchy (not greasy) like a mozzarella stick. The inside is divinely loaded with macaroni and cheese in perfect condition. It's like a Comfort Food Munchkin.

This little delight was found at the Biltmore Bar & Grille, a quaint pub in Newton Upper Falls (MA) where we recently had a private work party. If you're in the Metro Boston area and want to know pleasure on a plate, stop on in.

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Being a Virgo, I'm a huge fan of my birthday - aside from receiving well wishes, the largest icon of the birthday is the Birthday Cake. Since I've had just over 40 of these in my life, I have a pretty solid opinion on types of birthday cake, and also how to eat them.

My favorite Birthday Cake is Ice Cream Cake. Tom Carvel was my man from an early age. With a Carvel in my town, my birthday was not complete without a Carvel Ice Cream Cake. I do recall when I was small, that there was a light-colored row of crunchies in the middle layer, along with the chocolate crunchies. (anyone else remember that?) I'm not elitist when it comes to cakes, JP Licks does a good ice cream cake, and there's also the bi-sexual cake... the one layer of cake with one layer of ice cream together which is VERY naughty. I'm a big fan of bakery cakes as well, with a variety of frosting flavors - some that make your teeth ache, others that make you want to lick the plate clean.

My lovely and smart husband picked up a small triple layer bakery cake, golden cake with white frosting for my birthday. The frosting had a bit of an almond flair to it, almost undetectable but there. It was quite good - frosting sweet but not painful - perfect accompaniment to a small glass of milk. My dear co-poster Brian inscribed his drawing of the proper way to eat a piece of birthday cake in a card sent to me, which was the impetus to this posting.

Here's the way I would eat a triple layer (same general process for double layer) cake. It's all about proportion. Start with the most bland, lowest cake layer at the point, including the frosting row above it, working your way to the frosted end-cap. Move up each layer at a time in similar fashion. When you get to the top layer, eat the first part of the cake till you get about half way. Here are a few options:
a) use your fork and bisect the cake edge, so you are eating either the top frosting with a triangle wedge of cake, or the end-cap frosting with the triangular wedge of cake (as shown in the diagram).
b) eat both the top and end-cap in little blocks, so each bite has an "L" of frosting.

I tend to eat the B version, because it feels like i'm eating a lot of frosting - the big finish! I also do something similar with pies when i get to the crust.

Dress Like Your Favorite Food

I've been blessed with a sweet-as-heck 5 month old baby girl, and with the impending New England weather, her Nana sent some money for a snowsuit. Doing a websearch for "baby bunting" I found an insane amount of bizarre outfits that you can put your baby in. There was a large majority of Halloween Costume-esque ones, and a few disturbing ones (the whoopie cushion) but the ones I liked the best were the food costumes.

Wonder Bread - visions of pure chemicals dance before your eyes, the only bread that tastes as plastic as the bag it comes in.

Banana - nature's greatest pleasure, my favorite all purpose fruit. Why would I dress my daughter up as one? I'm not sure, but I don't think I could take her out in public without scarring her for life.

Smarties - the candy that was the only rival to Pez in its taste, size, and stackability. Does it transfer somehow metaphorically onto a baby? Not in any way I can think of, and I'm kind of twisted.

And my favorite food outfit I think is the Mustard Squeeze Bottle. I don't know why. It might be the simplicity of the design.... sleek and yellow, with the complementary "cap" hat, and the straightforward MUSTARD text emblazoned across the suit.

If you have twins, you could get the obvious partner suit, the Hot Dog.

Living in the Lemon Light

How is it that the Lime lives in the shadow of it's far less intriguing cousin the Lemon?

Sure, Lemons deliver pure sour flavor that requires sugar to make lemonade palatable (and darned refreshing).

Sure, Lemons can delicately accent the subtle flavors of grilled fish or fried calamari.

But it's the complexity in the Lime that add depth and intrigue to foods. Limes are sour in one recipe, then sweet in the next.

It's time to upstage the Lemon.

[Keep a few in the fridge and discover new uses for the Lime.]